The Contrary Effect of Collaborative Writing on ESL Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition

Abstract

Writing task is an integral part of education in ESL (English as a Second Language) at the foundation level. It has been observed that foundation level 3 students of Arab Open University have an insufficient knowledge of vocabulary which is reflected on their writing, as their usage of vocabulary is confined to a number of limited common words. This research explores the effect of collaborative writing on students' vocabulary acquisition. All the writing tasks were related to educational topics in order to provide students with the lexical items related to the same subject. This study took place in one of the foundation level 3 classes at Arab Open University, Oman branch. Fourteen anonymous Arab students for whom English is considered as the second language participated in this study. All students are in the intermediate level of English language proficiency. For each writing task, five collocations were selected to be taught in the class over a period of five weeks. The achieved outcomes revealed contrary results to the previous studies that had shown the effective impact of collaborative writing. This study has discussed the contrary impact of collaborative writing on improving the learners' vocabulary acquisition in addition to the challenges students faced during collaborative writing task. Finally, this research provides recommendations for the effective collaborative writing in the foundation students' language proficiency.

ESL Teachers’ Perceptions of Web-Based Collaborative Writing Activity

“…ESL students were aware that they were required to communicate in English during the activity, but their lack of proficiency prevented communication from happening (Lin and Nooreiny, 2013;Yan, 2020). Hence, the students compensated for their lack of second language (L2) proficiency by resorting to their first language (L1) (Bakhshayesh, 2016). Another issue pertinent to collaborative writing was students' lack of involvement in the activities.…”

“…In a another interview, students acknowledged that they did not benefit from collaborative writing because the ones who were proficient in the language and had better writing skills dominated the activity with claims, they knew better which minimized the confidence and motivation of less proficient members (Bakhshayesh, 2016;Yan, 2020). Some researchers also noted that unfair task distribution without members dominating one another could also occur when active members unwilling to take part in collaborative writing activity as it felt it unfair for them to did all the work when passive and unproductive members were rewarded with the same mark at the end of the activity even when these members contributed nothing (Al Ajmi, 2014;Dobao, 2012;Hsieh, 2019).…”

“…Students were also accustomed to writing as a solitary act (Lin & Nooreiny, 2013;Storch 2005). In an interview conducted by Bakhshayesh (2016), he discovered when students worked with ones they were not familiar with, it did not produce good results. He added collaborative writing was not productive because each student had their individualistic views towards something; therefore, agreeing on a common belief was very difficult to achieve.…”